I have always enjoyed to look at BentoZen's bento creations because I think that her bentos always look so pretty and elegant. My bento today is inspired by her "Poodles in Love Bento". I wanted to make my rice pink as well, but then I realised too late that I didn't have any beet juice left. So well, I used tomato sauce instead to colour the rice, but I don't think that orange looks so good as the background. This bento would look much lovelier with a pretty pink...!

The two poodles and the three flowers are made out of different types of cheese and nori and the sides include some cherry tomatoes, cucumber/carrot salad, two fried shrimps, one carved radish and three slices of tangerine.

Christmas is again on its way and since the CasaBento team really enjoyed to see the wonderful Halloween bentos created by many talented bento makers all over the world from the previous Halloween contest, they decided to organise another bento contest and this time, Xmas-themed :D)!

Each participant should submit two photos with the following details: last
name, first name, postal address, date of birth together with a
description of the bento in the photo (ingredients, name of the bento
box used, etc) to the following address: contest@casabento.com

A few days ago I made Jägerschnitzel aka Hunter Style Schnitzel. Today I came up with another popular dish from Germany, which is also schnitzel, but it is served with a different type of sauce that is Zigeuner sauce, or gypsy style sauce. As the name suggests, the sauce is slightly more piquant and has appealing, bright, red colour. Very tasty and definitely worth a try!

Zigeunerschnitzel - serves 2

The Cutlets

2 chicken/pork/veal cutlets

1 egg, beaten

1 tbs oyster sauce (optional)

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup panko bread crumbs

Oil for frying

The Gypsy Sauce

1 Tbsp oil

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 onion, sliced

1 bell pepper, sliced

2 Tbsp tomato paste

2 tsp ground paprika

1 tsp cayenne powder (or to taste)

Beef/Chicken powder to taste

1 Tbsp flour

250 ml cream

Sugar, to taste

Freshly ground pepper

Instructions

The Cutlets

Set the eggs, flour and bread crumbs in three different shallow bowls.

Add oyster sauce, salt and pepper to the egg bowl and mix well.

One at a time, dredge the cutlet in the flour, then dip in the egg mixture and coat with the bread crumbs.

Repeat step 3 one more time (optional).

Deep-fry the cutlets until golden brown.

Serve with gypsy sauce, salad and fries.

The Gypsy Sauce

Sauté chopped onion and garlic with 1 Tbsp of oil.

Add tomato paste, ground paprika, cayenne powder and beef powder.

Pour the cream and mix well.

Add bell pepper slices and cook for 1 minute.

Dust with flour and season with sugar and pepper. Cook until sauce is thickened.

These two lovely bear onigiris are filled with chicken teriyaki and mayo. I covered the rice balls with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) which make the bears look pretty fluffy. The nori details were punched out from the pink nori punch below and the white nose is made out of quail egg.

You can easily get these nori punches from CasaBento or other bento suppliers in Amazon or Ebay.

The two little chicks are also quail eggs. They look quite worried as
they know that they will be gobbled down by the two little bears quite
soon. Fortunately for the bears, they don't know that they'll be gobbled down by me soon after I finish writing down this post, that's why they're still smiling ;).

Have a great week ahead everyone!

Jägerschnitzel or Hunter Style Schnitzel is one of the most popular schnitzel varieties in Germany. It is breadcrumb-coated veal/pork/chicken which is served with creamy mushroom sauce. Since it's so well-liked over here, you can easily get instant Jägerschnitzel mixes in most German supermarkets, be they big or small.

I love to use panko bread crumbs instead of the usual western-style bread crumbs. Panko bread crumbs are much coarser and as a result, your schnitzel will be crispier and tastier :)!

Jägerschnitzel - serves 2The Cutlets

2 chicken/pork/veal cutlets

1 egg, beaten

1 tbs oyster sauce (optional)

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup panko bread crumbs

Oil for frying

The Mushroom Sauce

1 Tbsp oil

1 Tbsp chopped onion

8 -10 champignons, sliced

Beef/Chicken powder to taste

1 Tbsp flour

2 Tbsp white wine

200 ml cream

Freshly ground pepper

Instructions

The Cutlets

Set the eggs, flour and bread crumbs in three different shallow bowls.

Add oyster sauce, salt and pepper to the egg bowl and mix well.

One at a time, dredge the cutlet in the flour, then dip in the egg mixture and coat with the bread crumbs.

Repeat step 3 one more time (optional).

Deep-fry the cutlets until golden brown.

Serve with mushroom sauce, salad and fries.

The Mushroom Sauce

Sauté the chopped onion with 1 Tbsp of oil.

Add mushrooms and cook for 2 - 3 minutes.

Season with beef powder and dust with flour.

Add white wine, cream and pepper to taste. Cook until sauce is thickened.

I wanted to make charaben today, but in the end I was too lazy and just made a portion of good ol' traditional bento box ;).

The beautiful pink bento box is one of the many goodies which I got from Bento&Co. Remember the contest which I took part in some time ago?

The cute milk bottle-shaped seal is also from Bento&Co. It's supposed to be placed in the fridge and everytime you open the fridge, it will speak and even complain to you in Japanese - cute but can be irritating in the long run;). But now that the battery needs to be recharged, I am somehow missing that pesky noise which always greeted me everytime I left the fridge open for too long. It's even got a name: Fredoline ;).

Wishing you all a great weekend!

There is another bento contest going on...:)! Since Halloween is on its way, CasaBento is inviting all bento lovers from all over the globe to take part in their special Halloween contest as long as you are over 18 years old.

HOW TO ENTER

Each participant should submit two photos with the following details: last
name, first name, postal address, date of birth together with a
description of the bento in the photo (ingredients, name of the bento
box used, etc) to the following address: contest@casabento.com

CONTEST PERIOD
The contest ends on October 28th, 2012 at 11:59:59 P.M. Paris Time. All dates are subject to change. ﻿﻿﻿JUDGES
Your photos will judged by:

This is another simple bento which you can whip up within minutes, provided that you have all of the ingredients ready. And please do use fresh rice-noodles if you could, it'd make such a huge difference...!

Ingredients:

250 g fresh rice-noodles

100 ground pork (or chicken)

100 bean sprouts

1/4 cup chopped green onions

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 tbs fish sauce

2 tbs oyster sauce

1 tbs sambal oelek

1 Tbsp sweet soy sauce

white pepper to taste

Instructions

Heat oil in a wok.

Add the ground pork. Stir fry for 2 minutes.

Add fish sauce, sambal oelek and oyster sauce. Simmer for 1 minute.

Quickly add the noodles and stir until well combined.

Toss in the bean sprouts, green onions and sprinkle a dash of pepper. Stir fry for another 1 minute. Serve.

Top with slices of boiled egg, carved radish and a dollop of chili sambal :).

I managed to come up with another bento today. The previous weeks have been crazy, but I am glad to say that the next few months will be less stressful.

This panda bento was made with the intention to show bento beginners that you can also make a cute and neat bento meal without much effort in the kitchen. I used the panda onigiri set which I won from Bento&Co's 2012 Contest. I have to say that the panda onigiri set is a real gem - it allows you to create super cute panda onigiri within seconds! Well, okay, I do exaggerate a little bit ;), I would say about 2 minutes per panda onigiri.

This panda onigiri set contains a panda rice mold and a panda nori cutter. It costs $13.50.

I placed the two panda onigiri inside a lovely pink lego-shaped bento box which I also received from Bento&Co. They're very generous, aren't they?

You can choose the colour you like best: black, white, pink, red and blue. My favourite is pink and I am glad that it's the colour which Bento&Co chose for me :). You can buy the box over here. The price is $29.80.

My husband had this bento a few days ago. If you still remember, I told you that I made him a bento box with the same menu as mine. But he also had a piece of Korokke (Japanese croquette) and stir-fried bean sprouts which were missing in my bento.

I have to postpone my report about the things I got from Bento&Co for now as I am really short on time :(. Hopefully I'd be able to do so in the next few weeks.

I participated in a bento contest last July organised by Bento&Co.
Due to your kind support, I won the second prize :). I got a 10,000 Yen
voucher plus some bento boxes and accessories from Bento&Co. I received so many extra goodies apart from the items I chose using the 10,000 Yen from Bento&Co that I was totally flabbergasted (positively...;)) when I opened the parcels I got from them. I will report more about the wonderful goodies in my next post as I am quite short on time at the time being.

This
gorgeous wooden bento box is one of the things I chose from their online
store.

If you're interested to buy this, click the link over here. It costs 7,500 Yen (around €75). Indeed expensive, but worth the money as it's really flawless!! I am very happy with the box and now it belongs to one of my most favourite bento boxes :).